Friday, 19 May 2017

Can Corbyn Win?

I have always loved UK politics, I remember being very into the 1987 General Election, I was 12! I guess that makes me a nerd. I was even a very active activist for a while in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

As such, I reckon I know quite a bit about the subject. So I can't really believe what I am about to write, but here goes.

Theresa May's manifesto launch was awful, really awful. The BBC focused on protestors, the policies were anti-old people, anti-libertarian, tax rises and doom and gloom. And even with that it still did not reduce the deficit properly.

Corbyn launched Labour's fantasy manifesto to a group of highly-motivated toddlers who clapped and cheered. People talked about how some of these policies were a good idea; in the same way that the sun rising and blue skies are nice, but still. They did.

The Lib Dems, having chosen the worst strategy ever, being pro-remain, economically lefty and socially liberal in the UK in 2017 is, well, politically toxic. They also have some sort of stop-motion model as their leader. They will lose seats in the election and they only had 8 to start with.

UKIP, well, UKIP. I pity the receptacle of my vote for the past 10 years. They too have a total plonker as loser, having rejected some better ones along the way. They have no coherent policy base to speak of and have to hope they will keep some vote share. Their vote share though will be around 1/3rd of what it was just 2 years ago. Their victory in Brexit was awesome, their usefulness to UK domestic politics is at an end.

So now the polls are showing UKIP and Lib Dems as near wipeouts. The loony Greens can happily vote Labour as they have the same mad policy platform.

But Labour have the momentum, they started from a low base so just adding on the suicidal Lib Dems vote, shows them to be firming up. The Tories, having started so high, could literally only go backwards - and they are, albeit very slightly.

May gambled that an honest manifesto which was realistic could work. Perhaps she was wrong. Many people are silly these days;

'I'll vote for Corbyn, then I won't have to pay Uni for my kids, someone else will"

Of course someone does, but that someone is not you, it is those evil businesses and city types and those baby-eating Tories. I watched a bit of the ITV debate last night, it is sad how partisan the Country now is, the Tories made out to be actually evil and 'murdering the disabled.'

So Corbyn has the momentum, plus he can campaign, it is thing. The press are bored of reporting the Diane Abbot levels of incompetence, so look for them in the Tories too, when the comparison is fatuous. The Tory front bench has little real talent. The Labour front bench is actually full of morons, Angela Rayner struggles to even string a sentence together; it is woeful.

So there are only 2 scenario's; Labour advanced, the Tories wobble and the election gets much closer. After all, if May gets less than 50 majority she will in reality look a fool for holding the election.

Or perhaps people get over this mid-election wobble and flood back to the Tories at the end.

The way I see Corbyn winning is not in 2017 however, but in 2022. Brexit will be hard, the EU will make it tough, a recession is nailed on for sometime in the next 5 years. A Labour party within a few points of the Tories in 2017, will win in 2022 - imagine if that is a party still led by the hard left SJW faction! It will be time to emigrate, sharpish.

37 comments:

Umbongo
said...

Essentially voters have a choice between (very) Old Labour and New Labour (but without the relaxed attitude to non-cronies making a bit of money). I suspect your posting was made tongue in cheek but we're still 3 weeks from the election and Mrs May's lurch to the left might leave possible Conservative voters sitting on their hands rather than ticking the blue box at polling stations.

Can't see that endgame. There is no Corbyn labour. There is a Trot/Militant faction of some 20%.A split or a successful coup is nailed on. Marvel longlife Civil War is a given

Captain Anti-America is going to fight the Incredible Bulk of Tom Watson or Black Widow Cooper, in a battle for the unionverse.It will be very bloody and Labour are unlikely to be back in the fight for 2022.

Tony Blair's polling is below that of Corbyn. So he is unlikely to make a return. But like Hollande, just because the people loate and despise you doesn't mean you can't choose a successor. Its quite easy to envisage a youthful Macron fake anti-establishment figure being manufactured like a political boyband to take up the new Labour brand.With plenty of establishment and millionaire's spotting an opportunity funding and the best wishes of the EU, a more credible Tiny Tim might be able to side step the wreckage of the old-new-labour's Aleppo and step into the centre left ground that Theresa May wants to stand on.

As the campaign goes on May just looks worse and worse. She's losing integrity and gradually losing the perception that she is, at least, a safe pair of hands.

She is reminding me of Stuart Lancaster : chosen for similar reasons, initially seemed a wise/safe choice, made lots of progress, BUT the closer the Rugby World Cup loomed , the worse his judgement became, and the more frozen his decision making. The election seems to have similar effects on May; so definitely expect a top down wobble.

It's hard to imagine Corbyn could win, but he must be making up ground, and I don't trust the polls. I think we live in strange times and many people don't really know who they will vote for yet.

Can't see Corbyn winning this one or the next, although part of me would like to see him to - it's a rather selfish desire to let the millennials see the real world results of their demands, however as not every rat has the same capacity to leave the UK the rest of me doesn't want it to come to pass.

I was somewhat surprised at how dreary the Tory manifesto was, and their wrongheaded attack on business continues in manner that loses them votes rather than attract any from the genuine anti-business parties.

There were a few easy wins they could've done - offer university grants to x number of people meeting a criteria (e.g. good A-Levels, poorer backgrounds, doing a degree with rather more validity than Nail Technician or Meeja Studies), bin the 'bedroom tax' (which is a good idea if you've a healthy housing market, a self-inflected wound otherwise), deal with the ridiculous PIP issues...

Instead everything flows towards the Austerity isn't Working meme.

The next generation are too removed from the history of the 70's, so if the Tories wish to continue their record of success they're going to have be a lot more inventive and daring with their policies. I'm pretty sure the chances are there to both spike the Corbynista state-socialism love-in whilst reducing the state and saving the nation money, but they're going to have get out of their small 'c' conservative thinking rut in order to keep the large 'C' conservative party future-proofed.

For example, I'm increasingly convinced some kind of citizens reverse income tax would work out cheaper than universal benefits, pensions, overcomplicated tax regimes and the like, especially when you get to fire out P45's and close whole departments down. Just leave the housing and disability bennies, and bin the rest.

It can be sold as 'free' money to the left, smaller state to the right.

Although fuck knows what Corbyn would then come up with as a counter-offer. Probably print a million a week off to everyone!

At least a Corbyn victory would take some of the nervousness out of Brexit. We'd be totally and utterly buggered, with no one to blame but ourselves. No more need to worry about what the French will do, or what the Germans will do or anything like that. We would have pre-empted it all.

By 2022 a lot of blue rinsers will be dead, I suppose - except E-K Snr who will still be hanging on. All we need it the projectile vomiting and the headspinning and we've got The Exorcist. The drug driver (morphine pump) has caused him insomnia so the barking of orders is now 18 hours a day and the drug induced dementedness has taken over.

If ever you get prostate bone cancer do yourself and your loved ones a favour. Get yourself off to Dignitas.

Do not believe the McMillan Nurse when she says "You'll get exactly the same care at home as you will in an institution." You won't. She's lying.

Theresa May's manifesto launch was awful, really awful. The BBC focused on protestors, the policies were anti-old people, anti-libertarian, tax rises and doom and gloom. And even with that it still did not reduce the deficit properly.

On the contrary it is brilliant. It's the demographics wot won it.

If you are going to walk away from a large trade block and stop young, talented and taxpayers from the EU coming, then you have to raise taxes from the those that are left. And the only ones with cash are the wrinklies.

And why should those that have done nothing for their wealth other than live there not pay for their upkeep.

Always amazed that the so called Capitalists here are just as wedded to the taxpayers teat as the untrained, uneducated underclass our wonderful education system has churned out.

There is a new reality dawning which is we can't keep subsiding the wrinkles with free healthcare, index linked pensions and a light tax burden.

If you want a light tax burden stop taking it from the state - which should have been the campaign strapline and not "strong and stable". But no one gets elected telling it as it is.

Of course Corbyn can win. Every seat is up for grabs, and no votes have been cast. All he has to do is win the most votes in the largest number of seats.

I can't follow CU's logic or the moans of the perma-grumps.

May's prospectus is deliberately a mixed bag, but quite a lot of it is radically "right wing".

Social care is not going to be paid for by the state until you run out of money. How is that "Red Tory" or "New Miliband"??!

Publishing pay ratios etc. seem quite lefty but will there be much red meat when it comes down to it? It's not as though the salaries of fat cat corporate execs is not already discussed in boring detail in the press. If some of this is almost inevitable anyway, would you rather it implemented by a Tory Parliament or a Labour one? Which government is going to have louder free-enterprise voices making themselves heard from the back benches or around the cabinet table?

I think May's strategy is pretty solid: win across the board on a very broad and non-detailed manifesto. Then when it comes to the big issue (which is not worker-representatives) she can rightly claim to have brought the country with her. Nobody will be able to say "but we didn't vote to leave the customs union" as they do now, even though that is untrue.

So it amuses me that the virulent Total Brexit crowd on here are so anti May, who is doing Exactly What You Said You Wanted.

As for electioneering, the rent-a-nurse crowd outside the Halifax mill was perfect optics for May. The Unite whingers probably hardened the view of some who might be worried about a resurgence of militant nonsense. The BBC rather nicely focussed on a banner which read something like Kick Out The Tory Scum. An amazing contrast for May's "Mainstream Britain" positioning.

Some of you might do well to actually close down your House Price Crash tab and try to think about how people other than wonky goldbugs look at things. Most people do not over-analyse. If the BBC vox-pops/focus groups are anything to go by then May is cutting through in a Carlsberg way.

And remember that two thirds of the electorate now want to get on with Brexit, so the mealy-mouthed "maintain the benefits of the single market" hogwash from Labour and LDs is transparently out of touch.

So all of you on here saying you won't vote for May are hilarious. You won't vote for the only person actually willing to implement the referendum result? Bizarre.

Best news of the day, that is, fit to go alongside the "re-leavers" stats.

I was gobsmacked at that £100,000 care pledge, which basically means (given current house prices) that anyone not living in a one bedroomed flat in Ebbw Vale is going to end up having their estate stripped to pay for their care. "I warn you not to grow old", as Kinnock once put it. So much for the previous administration's raising of inheritance tax.

Were I Corbyn's team, I'd hammer that home night and day.

At present, inheriting property will be for many people their only chance of getting on the housing ladder.

Does May actually want to win?

(Anon - the "talented taxpayers" from the EU - how much tax does someone on minimum wage pay again? I'd like to go back to those hi-tech days when machines washed our cars.)

So our median male is poorer in 2016 than he was in 1997, in real terms. We can say total inflation is (596.1-356.9)/356.9 = 67% over that time period.

But over that same period house price inflation's been over 200% i.e. house prices have more than tripled. So our median male is poorer, and houses are more than twice as expensive in real terms (I'm being conservative here).

re the above, I see from BBC News that some Tories have woken up to the suicide pill Hammond has placed in the manifesto.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39987318

John Stanley, of the Bow Group, told BBC News: "The impact on the core vote will be awful - what I call the 'Tory Shire'. "Those shire Tories who work hard, play the game, live life by the rules. They're going to wake up Monday around the family copy of the Daily Mail asking themselves what on earth has just happened."

(I have three children btw, and they are all currently voting Corbyn, small data point (if May was really radical she'd cut numbers going to uni back to 5-10% of school leavers, its just 3 years of plausible indoctrination outside of STEM, and quite a bit inside it)).

I note the Guardian and BBC have radically cut back the Corbyn-bashing in the last week.

Things are better since the anti-agitation doses. We think we're in the last week.

(Seven months since the first limb break made him bed bound)

This ties nicely into Anon's 10.29 contribution and the Tory manifesto based on "why should kids who do nothing get inheritance ?"

The fact is Little bro' and I have done nearly 2 years of help and care and any further deterioration of Mum (herself disabled and infirm) could see her in a home and us denied any inheritance despite all our work.

It would help if the government paid the full cost of council occupants of care homes rather than getting pensioned property owners (PPOs) to subsidise their beds by charging them £1000 a week when the PPO only gets £600 of service (the £400 going to make up the shortfall.)

Magic money tree again here. Why should those working now have to pay for the dribblies who only worked for 35-40 years; looked to the state for a pension for the next 35-40 years at around 50% of the average wage; while only ever contributing 10%-15% into a pension in the first place.

The numbers don't stack up and all the dribblies want to do is to take from the young and then most likely give it to cats and dogs. The next generation cannot automatically presume their gaga parents are obliged to pass it on.

By prices returning to some sort of normality, driven by increased supply when the old folk have to sell their houses to fund their care, post-clog-popping, rather than for them to be hoarded down their bloodline.

There are enough houses in the country, broadly speaking. The issue with declining home ownership arises because (as ever) the incentive to keep hold of a house and rent it out is much bigger than the incentive to sell it and do something else with the money.

1. I'd like to blow my own trumpet and point out that I (as many others have today) have been yammering on about house prices on this blog for a good 5 years.This is what is causing the fracture in UK society. And, with Carney determined to keep prices inflated via QE (to save the banks from crashing), the erstwhile financial strains will continue to roil the political scene.

Brexit was caused by QE.

2. I also mentioned here recently that I dont think May wants to win the election.I predicted a few weeks ago a whole series of Tory policy 'blunders' and we are starting to see them.Within 18 months we will be in one of the most vicious recessions in modern UK history. It will be a bloodbath. Brexit will be blamed, but that is only partially correct. It is now acknowledged by all but the most insane, that the economic actions taken after the GFC were wholly incorrect and have damaged the UK for a generation. They need to be undone. This recession will undo them.Afterwards the UK can start afresh.

Mrs May then wants a thumping majority for her reforms - she is laying her cards on the table to prepare the electorate for what is coming.Failing that she wants 'spectacular failure'(electorally) and a govt of 'national unity' to see brexit through. This option would allow her to nail the recession and brexit consequences onto the other parties too.

I was right about house prices; they've riven the country apart.I'm right about May and her win/lose gambit.And I'm right about the recession - its going to be brutal.

1/ supply has increased enormously, everywhere you look new houses are going up, even in places like Spennymoor, Middlesbrough and Milford Haven where the number of well paid jobs is a fraction of what it was.

2/ Demand - where are a few million Poles and Romanians living? They aren't all in sheds or tents. If you read that nice Landlady Blog they are the majority of her tenants.

3/ Demand II in places like London, more than half the new flats go to foreign buyers. And now Chinese and other investors are looking outside London.

4/ supply of money - a house price crash, desirable as it may be, would take out the banks (again). We saw in 2008 that the government was prepared to do anything to prevent that happening, including allowing people to just double down on their debt.

5/ I've been waiting for house prices to come down for over 35 years, ever since Mrs Thatcher unleashed the credit bubble.

Anon 4.00 - we seem to have gone in 50-60 years from a society where pretty much everyone could afford a house (and pass it on to their kids), women could raise their own children at home, the fruit got picked/bottoms wiped/coffee served entirely by British people, we were world leaders in nuclear power and near the top in other technology, to a place where we can't do anything ourselves, can't afford homes, import our nuclear expertise from France and China, and what remains of our industry has been sold to the highest bidder. This is all apparently progress.

This election is being fought on the old, unreformed constituency boundaries, which favour the Labour Party by around 6%. They are particularly favourable in urban and semi-suburban seats, which the Conservatives might otherwise hope to gain on an overall national swing, but which could in practice stay Labour.

Assuming May wins, her aim should be to bring in the new reformed boundaries, together with the reduction in MP's numbers down to 600 seats.

She should also reduce the House of Lords to about half of its present size, which would get rid of a lot of the Labour and LibDem place-persons who have been obstructing Brexit and other necessary legislation.

The next Parliament, from 2022, would thus be a much more legitimate and representative assembly, with a House of Lords to match.

"The Times has established that more than 93% of flats in one of Manchester's biggest housing developments have been bought by foreign residents or companies registered overseas. Only 17 of the 282 flats were bought by British residents and only two are being lived in by UK owners. The rest are empty or being rented out."

The foreigners are buying because they can (try buying in India) and it's a 'safe' investment - because of the long UK tradition of stability and rule of law - a stability likely to get pretty frayed in the next 50 years as we go back to pre-WWII (if not WWI) lives - low wages, rent all your life, retire on low income just before death.

After all the excrutiating pain and indignity you end up slowly drowning in your own mucus. That's how you go. Trapped and panicking for hours/days on end - because the one thing they will not do is kill you.

EkNo. There are plenty of ways to end your own life with varying levels of impact on others. One of those ways is to jump in front of a train and one morning I saw the erm aftermath of that as a 125 came to a halt at Bushey after someone 'met' it just after Watford.If euthanasia is legalised, it will be provided by the NHS and doing that forces doctors to become that train driver. Worse, consider a cadre of doctors who consider euthanasia normal. A plural of them could be termed a Shipman. Doctors are highly skilled in providing effective pain relief and already have a good understanding of the trade offs between length of life and quality of life. I think the law as it stands is messy but reasonable - If you kill yourself, fine. If someone else kills you even at your request, that is murder and if caught that person should face life in prison.

Otherwise there are plenty of slightly frail old ladies with big houses in the south east who do not to be a burden on their family who will be queueing up to talk to their NDS doctor.

@Anonymous said..."Anon 4.00 - we seem to have gone in 50-60 years from a society where pretty much everyone could afford a house (and pass it on to their kids), women could raise their own children at home, the fruit got picked/bottoms wiped/coffee served entirely by British people, we were world leaders in nuclear power and near the top in other technology, to a place where we can't do anything ourselves, can't afford homes, import our nuclear expertise from France and China, and what remains of our industry has been sold to the highest bidder. This is all apparently progress. "Very true both Labour and Tories are responsible for this.